Marco Rubio And The Wilderness Of Rakes

This weekend, I will be in and around Steve King's big hootenanny out in Ioway. So will Senator Marco Rubio, former rising star of the Republican party,who is now making serious noises about running for president in 2016. And, by serious noises, I mean publishing yet another unreadable book and hiring bagme...er...fundraisers and, well, doing things like kissing Steve King's cantalouped hindquarters at noon in a storefront on Main Street. Ed Kilgore points us to a maximum tooth-decaying beat-sweetener from Eleanor Clift, who does not see the rakes on the lawn, either.

A stack of books on a side table, complimentary to reporters...

(This beats the remainder table, I guess.)

... heralds another step in Florida Senator Marco Rubio's emerging presidential campaign. He's in Washington promoting American Dreams, his new book, which lays out his proposals for equal opportunity, equal dignity, and equal work.

(Which are the same as Ronald Reagan's, and George W. Bush's, and Mike Huckabee's, and Paul Ryan's...)

There's a chapter on "Making College a Good Investment Again," and another on "Economic Security in an Insecure Time." The book jacket shows a smiling Rubio, sleeves rolled up, hands on hips, ready to go to work. If you took off the cover picture, much of the language inside the book could come from Senator Warren and Secretary Clinton, a reporter observes, asking Rubio, "Aren't you arguing about an issue that has generally been considered Democratic turf?"

(Yeah, I'm sure Senator Professor Warren believes what Rubio is selling in the next sentence of Clift's paean.)

So much of the recovery has gone to such a small segment of the population, people at the "upper echelon", Rubio calls them. "The answer is not a series of tax increases to redistribute wealth," and more spending programs, which is how he describes President Obama's proposals in Tuesday's State of the Union speech.

(Yeah, Senator Professor Warren was right out there calling free community college tuition a "spending program," and a return to Ronald Reagan's capital-gains tax rate "redistribution of wealth." Rubio's book, no matter how much that manly-man photo of his on the cover sets your heart a'flutter is the same old snake-oil in a new bottle marked, "21st Century.")

But here's where Clift goes over the moon and the piece goes off the trolley.

He goes on to say he had recently visited the Kennedy Library, and was captivated by how President Kennedy had been able to grow and evolve between the Bay of Pigs and the Cuban Missile crisis. JFK was a freshman senator when he ran for president in 1960. It's easy to imagine Rubio gaining inspiration from the life and legend of JFK, wanting to see how far his ambition, his agile mind and his easy conversational style can take him in the biggest leagues of politics.

Dear God, will there never be an end to the search for the Republican JFK? And the only demonstration I've ever seen that Rubio's mind is "agile" was how quickly he abandoned his role in the vanguard of immigration reform when the benighted yahoos of his base started hollering at him. That was the last time he was the Young, Rising Republican hope, and it was all of two years ago.

Look, Rubio has a shot at the nomination. Not a good one, because of his brief flirtation with basic humanity on the immigration issue, but certainly a better one than several of the other prospective entries. But that is because the Republican party is still so far gone into the prion disease that is eating away its higher functions that almost everyone has a chance at the nomination, for which they are going to have to appeal to the Angry Velveeta wing of the party for six months before attempting to get their souls out of hock in time for the general election. Thus far, Rubio has shown no sign of the political shrewdness that maneuver requires. In fact, he has been notably maladroit. No Romney maladroit, but that's a high bar to clear.

And in a presidential field that's getting crowded, there's still an opening for someone as engaging as Rubio if he can translate his personal story into policy prescriptions that are relevant to the voters.

And off they walk, arm in arm, across the lawn. Does either one of them see the rakes? Do they?

What do you think?

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Charles P. PierceCharles P Pierce is the author of four books, most recently Idiot America, and has been a working journalist since 1976.

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